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Shortlist

We are delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2017 Write to End Violence Against Women Awards.

This year we received a wonderful range of submissions across all the categories. These were reviewed by a panel to form the shortlist below. To read more about what we were looking for when we reviews submissions, read Handle with Care, our guide for journalists.

We look forward to welcoming all the shortlisted authors to the awards ceremony on Thursday 7th December, where the winners will be announced.

Over the festive break, we’ll be sharing reflections from each of our 2015 Write to End Violence Against Women Awards winners which were originally published in the National Newspaper on 11 December 2015.

BACK in 1992 when the Zero Tolerance campaign launched in Edinburgh and was considered controversial for putting the issue of domestic abuse on the flagpoles of Princes Street and on the sides of Lothian buses, I was just starting out on my career in journalism.

Covering “women’s issues” wasn’t even a consideration – I just wanted to tell people’s stories and uncover wrongs in society; to get an exclusive.

It turns out that the stories which I’ve told, the wrongs which I’ve “uncovered” have too often involved women – too many women – who have suffered domestic assault, violence, rape and other physical and mental abuses.

You run campaigns for organisations like Women’s Aid, you write editorials welcoming new policies in tackling domestic abuse, you search for ever more powerful testimony from women whose lives are shattered, and yet you can be left wondering if any of it has impact.

That’s why the Write to End Violence Against Women awards are important. They are a recognition that newspaper journalists are trying to get to the heart of an issue which shames Scotland – as well as being a conscience to a media which can still be inherently sexist.

Over the festive break, we’ll be sharing reflections from each of our 2015 Write to End Violence Against Women Awards winners which were originally published in the National Newspaper on 11 December 2015.

I’M so pleased and proud to get a prize in these excellent awards – particularly because my 11-year-old daughter Lulu came along to Holyrood to see me get my hands on the glassware.

It’s good that she knows Scotland will not tolerate violence against women and children – and that her dad’s job, often pretty silly-looking, can be part of that task.

Our long investigation of child rape and other crimes at Gordonstoun School in Moray was motivated by two things. One was the need to show that the flaws in protection systems for the vulnerable occur at all levels of society: in “great” public schools as well as in care homes. So does the culture of complacency and cover-up.

The other was to point up how terribly the Scottish legal system lets down survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Scottish advocates will tell you that we have the best legal system in the world; but it is plain to victims of rape or of violence in the home that, for them, our system is one of the worst

Over the festive break, we’ll be sharing reflections from each of our 2015 Write to End Violence Against Women Awards winners which were originally published in the National Newspaper on 11 December 2015.

I WAS delighted to win the award for best news article at this year’s Write to End Violence Awards, which had so many fantastic entries in all categories.

My article published in the Sunday Herald – ‘Scottish women taking on the sexist curse of street harassment’ – was written in the wake of the case of Poppy Smart, a young woman who went to the police after being plagued by wolf-whistling and sexist comments from builders every day.

The article uncovered some shocking statistics about the levels of sexual harassment experienced by women in the street and highlighted the work being done by movements like Hollaback, which encourages women to share their experiences of unwelcome jeers and obscenities.

Too often this issue is dismissed as harmless banter or wolf-whistling – yet it is something which impacts on everyday lives. Many women will have experienced that feeling of dread walking past a building site on their own.

As one of the Hollaback campaigners noted, 10 years ago street harassment wasn’t even a term, just something that happened. It is mainly thanks to the efforts of women like Poppy Smart that attitudes are beginning to change.

Over the festive break, we’ll be sharing reflections from each of our 2015 Write to End Violence Against Women Awards winners which were originally published in the National Newspaper on 11 December 2015.

I’M delighted to have won this award and I’m very grateful to the organisers and judges who make this important event happen every year.

This is an honour that’s made even more special by the fact that, at the inaugural Write to End VAW Awards in 2012, I was lucky enough to win the first ever Best Blog prize.

That blog was about Reeva Steenkamp and the media’s treatment of her after her death at the hands of a man. Last week, almost exactly three years later, that man was finally convicted of her murder.

That it took so long for her killer to be brought to justice shows just how easily rape culture permeates structures as fundamental as criminal justice. But that doesn’t happen on its own, and that those three years have been filled with media discussion of the case ranging from victim-blaming to the idolisation of a murderer shows how reliant such a culture is on dominant narratives which excuse and minimise male violence against women.

That’s why writing is a crucial form of activism; it raises important voices to a rape culture whose enduring popularity relies on rhetoric. It allows us to present counter-narratives to those which bolster structural inequality.

Writing to end violence against women shouldn’t be necessary. But as long as it is, I am proud to play a part.